It was now a long time, four or five hundred years, since Homer lived, and Greece had changed in many ways. It had grown much richer, and there were now the new poets Sappho and Hesiod, and many sculptors, who made beautiful statues to represent the gods and goddesses, and ornamented the graceful Greek temples.

Every five years the people from all Greece gathered to see the Olympic games, which were held in honor of their god, Zeus. There the young men and boys jumped, ran and wrestled with one another, and those who did best received a laurel crown. The boys who won were very proud of their crowns. It was at the games that the poets recited their new poems. Do you think that by gathering together in this way the people would understand each other better and be willing to help one another when they got into difficulty, as Athens is now?

You remember that, in Homer's time, there were little city-states scattered about in Greece separated by the hills and mountains. Well, these villages have now grown into towns and there are many more of them than in Homer's time. The people still do not live together in one government as they should, if they wish to be strong, but perhaps when Darius comes to fight Athens they will forget their little jealousies of one another and will join to protect their beautiful land. Sometimes, when these cities became crowded or the people disliked their king, they left their home-city, and sailed away as colonists to build new homes in Italy, Sicily, and far across the Ægean Sea along the coast of Asia Minor. Now, it is about something these cities in Asia Minor did that Darius, the Persian king, is angry. You do not now quite see why, but I think you will presently. But first I must tell you another thing that was changed since Homer's time. There were no longer kings in the little states ruling the people, except at Sparta, which was the largest city in southern Greece; and this king had men called ephors to help him. At Athens, the chief city in Attica, there had been no king for a long time. Long ago the people had grown tired of having one man rule them, and had chosen men called archons, and legislators, to rule them and make their laws.

Solon was one of the wisest of these men. He had traveled in many lands, in Egypt and Asia, was of noble birth, and kind to all the people. The rich had gotten most of the power in their hands and left the poor unprotected, but when Solon was chosen to be both archon and legislator, he made new laws to help the common people. They were glad of this, but because he did not divide the lands again as had been done before and give them a share, they were dissatisfied. But Solon saw that the people were better off than before, and hoping that they would stay so, he went away from Athens to travel again, spending, it is said, two years in travel and study—in the wiser and richer countries of the Old East.

Sometimes in the cities of this little land of Greece a nobleman who had been disappointed in not getting some office which he wanted, or who did not like the ruler, would say to the people, that if they would help him to put down the rightful ruler of the country so that he himself might rule, he would help all the people to have an easier time. A man who got the power this way was called a tyrant. I want to tell you about the tyrant Pisistratus, who seized the power after Solon went away.

Pisistratus came hurriedly driving into Athens one day, covered with blood and his mules bleeding. He told the people that his enemies had tried to kill him because he was the people's friend. This pleased the people, and they voted him a bodyguard of soldiers. With these he gained control of Athens and ruled for many years. He was a good ruler and did much to improve Athens. He built the Academy, which was something like the beautiful parks in some of our cities, and made a fine gymnasium in it, for the boys to exercise in. He also built a temple to Athena on the Acropolis,—a great rocky hill in the center of Athens.

But after him came his two sons, and they were not so good as their father. One of them was killed, and the other, Hippias, was driven out of the country. He went to the Persian court, but we shall presently see that he came back to Greece. After Hippias, there was one more friend of the people, Cleisthenes, who did much to help Athens by giving her better laws. After him the people were ruled again by archons, and it is at this time, 490 years before Christ was born, that Phidippides ran quickly to Sparta to ask help against the Persians.

The Grecian cities on the coast of Asia Minor had been ruled for several years by the Persian king, Cyrus, who was a great and good ruler of the Persians; but a few years before this time Cyrus died, and Darius came to be the ruler. Before the Persians conquered the Greek cities in Asia Minor, these cities had been ruled by Croesus of Lydia, the little country just east of them. He was kind to them, but the Persians, who liked to conquer all the countries about them, not only made the Greeks pay much money to them, but they had to be the Persian king's soldiers as well. Men who loved to rule themselves as dearly as the Greeks would not like this.

Darius, who now ruled over Persia, reaching from the Indus River to the Ægean Sea, found it so large that he needed many men to help him govern it. Many of the people over whom he ruled were not at all like the real Persians, but lived and dressed very differently. Darius did not care for this, as all he wanted was that they should pay him money and fight his battles. Would these men make as good soldiers as the Greeks, do you think?

Not long before Phidippides went to Sparta, the Grecian cities in Asia Minor which Darius ruled had revolted, and asking help of Athens and Eretria, their near kinsmen, they had together burned Sardis, one of Darius' richest and finest cities in Asia Minor. This was why Darius was so angry with Athens. He soon punished the colonies on the coast, and then shot an arrow toward Athens, to show that he meant to punish her next, but lest he forget (for he had many things to do in his great empire), he had a slave say to him each day at dinner, "Master, remember the Athenians"; and now he was getting ready to remember them. He had sent heralds to the different Grecian cities, bidding them send him "earth and water" as a sign that they would serve him. Most of the states had done so, but Athens had thrown the herald who came to her into a pit, and Sparta had thrown hers into a well. You may be sure a great king, ruling a vast empire, would feel very angry to have a little country like Greece treat his messengers in this way.

When his army was ready, he sent it across the Ægean Sea, toward Athens. As soon as Athens heard that the Persians were coming she sent Phidippides, the fleet-footed, as I have already told you, to Sparta for help; but Sparta could send no aid because the moon was not yet full, and it was against her law to start to battle before the full moon; so Athens was left to meet the enemy alone, but she did it bravely.

When the Persians reached Greece and landed at Marathon, led by the traitor Hippias (you remember who he was, do you not?), they found a little army of the Athenians gathered upon the hillside back of Marathon, eighteen or twenty miles northeast of Athens, under the Athenian general, Miltiades, ready to meet them. Without waiting for the Persians to begin the attack, the Athenians, singing, rushed down into the plain on the enemy so furiously that the Persians became frightened and confused, but not so the Greeks, who fought until the Persians turned and fled to their ships. The Greeks followed and destroyed many as they tried to get into their boats. One brave Greek seized a boat and held it fast till his hand was cut off.

Marathon was a great victory, and the Athenians were very proud of it. Just as the battle was over, the Spartans came up, but they were too late to help drive the Persians away. The Athenians had fought the great battle almost alone, and in after years the thought of it led them to do just as great things.

Miltiades did not let his victorious army camp on the battlefield that night and enjoy a feast of the many good things which the Persians left, but marched his soldiers across the country eighteen miles, without a halt, back to Athens. He thought that the Persians would next try to capture the city. The tired soldiers had only just reached home when they saw the Persians sail into the bay near Athens; but when the enemy saw the same brave men who had the day before defeated them, ready to fight again, they sailed away to their own country in Asia as fast as they could.

After the Persians were gone, Miltiades had the brazen arms and shields which had been captured from them melted and made into a statue of the goddess Athena and placed on the Acropolis. Darius was so sure that he could defeat the Greeks that he had brought a great block of marble along to put up in the city as a monument to celebrate his victory; but it was used for a different purpose, for Phidias, the great Grecian sculptor, made a beautiful statue from it.